Tyler: A character profile
by DeFaeror
Summary: A short story to help me figure out who one of my main characters for a larger story really is. Scavenger, savior, scientist, sadist?
1. Chapter 1

"I got it!"

"What are you yelling about, Kurt?"

"I got the flame to take!"

"Fred, Kurt, will both of you kindly shut the fuck up? Unless you want to be eaten, in which case I think I saw some rebar back there you can use to spit yourself on."

"Fine, fine, you're right. But hey, I got the fire going, you got anything to cook with Tyler?" Kurt said, adjusting the pyramid of logs over the quickly heightening flames. Tyler had already pulled out the foldout grill, three cans of Spam and a knife and was handing them to Kurt. Those two idiots were going to get him killed, but he couldn't just leave them behind. They kept following him.

"Thanks man. This whole thing is the pits. I saw my fucking trig teacher at that store!" Fred said, opening up his Spam and slicing it up with the knife while Kurt put the grill over the fire. Tyler sighed, shaking his head as he popped the top on one of the last sodas he had. Gulping down a third of the bottle at once, his thoughts were inexorably drawn to how he had met the two teenagers across the fire from him.

He had been walking down the empty street, avoiding the places where the packs of undead seemed to group together. Another boring day looking for somewhere to hole up for the night. He had just taken a break and had only been walking for about ten minutes when he heard yells coming from a liquor store across the street. They were all making what noise they could with their decaying vocal chords as they pounded their hands against the huge glass windows in front of the store, while two more voices were yelling from inside. Immediately, out of habit borne from two weeks of avoiding death, he moved into the shadows of the closest stoop, pulling the handgun he had taken off of a grey haired zombie days before. He didn't know what it was, but it had a 16 round clip and enough power to get through the skull, so he had kept it.

Moving slowly, making sure there weren't more zombies in the alleys around the street, Tyler moved towards the group, pistol aimed. He counted ten, but the group was moving too fast to be absolutely sure. Suddenly a loud crack split the air as the Plexiglas window weakened under the onslaught of the zombies. Squeezing the trigger, Tyler smiled as a zombie crumpled with a fresh hole in it's skull. He fired four more times, re-killing two zombies and dropping a third to the ground to be trampled by the group as it turned towards the new target. The smile disappeared as Tyler turned and sprinted down the street and into an alley. As the zombies turned the corner, continuing their low bellowing, a flash lit the walls and raced down an alley perpendicular to their location, followed quickly by another. Before a third could shoot off into the alley the zombies had turned and were chasing after the fleeting bits of light, forgetting about the liquor store and Tyler. Six pops covered their moans and the thuds of their bodies hitting the pavement, followed by a belated seventh.

Pistol still in hand, Tyler walked out of the alley and ran back to the liquor store to peer into the cracked window. Flicking the safety and taking hold of the gun by the barrel, he finished the job with a few quick strikes of the grip and stepped in to look for the source of the other screams.

There were no other zombies inside, and after walking up and down the aisles and then checking the security camera's tv screen behind the counter, Tyler holstered the pistol and walked to the back of the store. A door, covered in faded blue paint chips that could only hint at it's original color, was the only break in the wall to wall coolers filled with booze in the place. A quick inspection told him it opened outward, so he took hold of the handle and opened the door, moving so that he would be behind it when it stopped moving. A scream followed by the loud crash of a teenager running into a shelf full of glass bottles followed, and Tyler was left looking down at Fred and Kurt, the former holding a crowbar; the latter a box cutter. He had laughed, kicking the crowbar away and saying, "Relax, I just saved your asses."

He had thought that would be the end of that. He grabbed some bottles of the strongest alcohol he could find, refilled the bag he kept specifically for cigarettes, and turned to leave to find his two rescuees standing in front of him, arms laden with various alcohol. "You've got to let us come with you!" "There will be more here anytime now, and the window's broken!" "You've got guns, we have a box cutter!" and various other pleas spewed from their mouths as he pushed past them and out onto the street, but they just kept following him. Finally, an hour later, he stopped in his tracks and rounded on them, agreeing to let them continue following him if they dropped all the booze. Dismayed but obedient, they did just that, but still hadn't shut up.


	2. Chapter 2

Tyler snapped out of his musings to find Fred and Kurt comparing notes, if their barely formed thoughts could be classified as such, on the outbreak. Mostly they were summarizing the plots to movies and video games and lamenting the fact that they didn't have a shotgun while casting furtive glances Tyler's way. Most likely they had been asking him questions for a while that he hadn't heard. That's all they seemed to do, so he had just chalked their voices up to background noise and ignored it. Dropping the empty soda bottle next to his feet, Tyler reached into the messenger bag on his left side and pulled out a can of Spagetti-Os and a spoon. Opening it with a Swiss Army Knife he had found on the same zombie he had pilfered the pistol from, he put it on the grill and watched the paper label catch fire and peel away from the metal can. He didn't speak for nearly another hour, until Kurt asked a semi-intelligent question for once.

"Is it safe to sleep here, you think?"

Tyler looked up from the notes he had been copying from his pocket notebook into his journal, extending a shorthand style that would impress the busiest of doctors, and thought for a second. "No, I don't think so. When we're done with the fire we should barricade the doors and as many windows as we can and move up to the second floor. It should be safe enough there."

The small group was sitting in a run down apartment style house made mostly of concrete, seven stories tall. They were currently in the back of a lobby area behind a sectional wall, the smoke from the fire moving up the stairs thanks to the draft created by a few open windows. Thinking the subject closed, Tyler had returned to his writing when Fred began hacking loudly, and looked up in time to see Kurt looking worriedly at his friend's bandaged hands. They had told Tyler that Fred had climbed through a broken window to meet up with Kurt, but that look told him otherwise. Putting the small notebook back in his breast pocket, Tyler leaned back against a wall and let out a long yawn.

"So Fred, what happened to your hand again?" he asked, resting his hands behind his head.

There was a moment of silence split by the same hacking cough as Fred opened his mouth to start talking. After the fit was over, his voice was weak, timid, and hesitant… almost fearful. "I cut them up pretty bad on a broken window meeting up with Kurt. Wrapped them up before we went on to his dad's liquor store."

Tyler nodded, not moving from his relaxed position against the wall. The story was the same as before, but why was he acting so afraid? They were obviously hiding something, and a sickening feeling in his stomach told Tyler what it was. "Come over here, I want to change the bandages. If you keep those old ones on it you're bound to get some infection or another."

The pair of teenager's eyes widened simultaneously, first in shock and then fear. "No, no, its ok, really. The cuts weren't that bad, stopped bleeding real quick," Fred replied, holding up the bandaged hands as if to show they were fine, but the brown discoloration told a different story.

"Yea, he's fine. Immune system strong as an ox, this guy's got," Kurt piped in hurriedly.

"Well, if its all the same, I'm still going to need to rewrap them," Tyler said, a note of finality in his voice.

Fred and Kurt looked at each other nervously for nearly a minute before Fred finally got up and walked over to where Tyler now sat straight backed, legs crossed underneath him. Tyler took Fred's right hand and begun unwrapping the bandage slowly. After it was all the way off, he examined the flesh and then moved to the other hand without saying a word. Removing the second bandage with similar speed, he examined the left hand as well, careful to pay the same amount of attention. The flesh was certainly cut with something, though it wasn't glass. The edges were ragged. Whatever had caused them had been an outside entity that was moving by itself, not a broken window pane.

As Tyler began wrapping fresh bandages from one of his many pockets around the wounds, he watched Fred's face. His expression was scared and nervous, and his skin was exceptionally pale. It seemed as if his veins had become more visible recently, and he continued to cough at irregular intervals. Finishing up the second bandage, Tyler said, "Alright, you're all done. Doesn't look bad at all." He had his suspicions, but he'd need confirmation before he could condemn the kid, even if he was annoying as all hell.


	3. Chapter 3

They spent about another hour by the fire before Tyler put away his notebook and unzipped his coat. Placing it in the corner with the larger of his two backpacks, he moved into the main room. The place must have been some kind of homeless shelter or halfway house or something, based on the lobby area and the many small rooms on the other floors. Tyler was reminded of his years in a college dorm and shuddered, resolving to stay out of the bathrooms. The tables were cheap, fairly flimsy pieces of furniture, but that would just make them easier to nail into place. Pulling a plastic box out of one of the larger pockets on his camper's pants with a metallic clinging sound, he dropped it to the floor along with the hammer he had grabbed from his pack earlier. Moving over to a longer table, he flipped it over and worked on taking off the legs. Fred and Kurt watched from against the far wall, not sure what to do. They had tried to help before, but it almost always resulting in a sarcastic or biting response from Tyler. This time however, he just looked up and said, "Hold this table up across the door while I nail it up. Then you can go and get the screwdrivers out of my bag and start taking down the interior doors." Kicking the four removed legs away from the table, Tyler moved to the plastic box of nails without another word.

The two did as they were told, and the smaller tables and other doors were used to barricade the rest of the openings on the first floor, including a back door that led into an alley and numerous windows in the lobby room and some kind of employee's lounge. Once they were finished, Tyler checked the fire to make sure it wouldn't burn something down, grabbed his bags and went upstairs after the other two. Putting his jacket and the his two messenger bags back on, he continued up past Fred and Kurt and explored the rest of the building, floor by floor. In the two hours that they sat by the stairs waiting, the teenagers heard three gunshots, and never less than a minute apart. Tyler returned looking no different, telling them it was all clear now, and that's when Fred started hacking again.

Kurt watched with fear far more pronounced than before, and Tyler watched with trepidation from behind him, hand on his pistol. After nearly five minutes of hacking and struggling to breath, Fred's eyes bulged. Doubling over, barely supporting himself on shaking arms, he heaved and putrid smelling black vomit spilled onto the floor in front of him in a seemingly endless stream. Fred began crying from the pain as the vomit finally stopped, and Kurt turned toward Tyler who had taken five steps backwards and had the gun raised and aimed at his head.

"Listen, please listen! It was just from a window! He was only cut by a window! I SWEAR!" Kurt began yelling, talking with the sort of excitement you could only find in hysterics.

"Cut the bullshit," Tyler began calmly, "He's going to change. Now I need to know what he's going to change into or --"

"NO! HES NOT INFECTED! HE DOESN'T HAVE THE VIRUS OR WHATEVER THE HELL IT IS TH--" Kurt yelled, getting up from his knees and taking a step towards Tyler before he was silenced by a single shot to the head. As his body fell with a wet thump, Fred's stomach began rejecting more of the bile that was building up there.

Tyler took two steps forward without lowering the gun and waited for Fred to stop throwing up. Once he did, Tyler continued in the same calm voice, "Now Fred, what got you? Was it just a normal one? What happened?"

Coughing up small spurts of remaining black filth that ran down his chin, Fred looked up at Tyler, his eyes fearful but resigned. "It… it had huge claws coming out of it's hand… huge -" he said, talking slowly and stuttering over words as more sick found its way up his throat.

Tyler nodded, then moved over to his bag behind Fred. Too weak to even turn his head to follow the movement, Fred could only hear the sound of rummaging and then of a zipper being pulled. The next thing he knew, a dirty piece of cloth was between his teeth and wrapped around his face, being tied off in the back. He attempted to struggle as much as he could, but it was a pathetic sight, even in a world where the word had gained new meaning. After Fred's yells had been stifled by the cloth, Tyler tied his arms together with a small piece of rope, then dragged him into one of the small rooms and tied that rope to the radiator there.

Once he was done, Tyler pulled the mattress off of the bed, flipped it over and pushed it underneath Fred. "I'm sorry I can't just kill you Fred, I really am, but I need to see what happens to you," he said, pulling a dirty metal chair into the center of the room and sitting. "If it had just been one of the Shamblers, or even a Runner, I'd be able to just kill you. But you were infected by a mutant and survived, and that makes you a valuable and rare person indeed. I'm sure I don't need to tell you how ferocious most of them are, usually if you fight one close enough to get infected, you get your head ripped off." He paused, observing the look of disgust on Fred's face that had replaced the horror. "Yes, I know, how awful of me, how inhumane. Scientists need to be inhumane. Once you were infected, you became a subject, and I truly am sorry. If you go to sleep, it would make it so much easier on you," Tyler finished, awkwardly pulling a notebook out of a smaller backpack underneath his coat and flipping to a page marked Mutants.


	4. Chapter 4

The following is Exhibit A in the Eastern Coalition of Recivilized States against Tyler Brown, coded CN0011EA. A handwritten entry in a worn but well taken cared of composition book.

--- --- ---

Mutants

Whatever is causing the changes in deceased people (I have not been able to acquire a microscope to confirm a bacterial or viral cause) there are obviously differences. These differences are widespread with seemingly no commonalities between the different types of zombies. I hate to use that word, but that is what they are. Anyway, this lack of obvious linking characteristics leads me to the belief that it is the cause, not the victims, that has different strains. Or maybe it is different causes altogether, I have no way to test these hypotheses! If only I could be afforded the simple conveniences of a high school biology classroom. A scalpel, a large table, and a microscope with some slides. But this is not the place.

As I have mentioned before, there is the common zombie with two distinct strains:(I will continue to use terminology assuming a microorganism is the cause until I am proven otherwise as it seems the most plausible to me) The Shamblers and the Runners. Physically they are not obviously different from each other, except the Shamblers' flesh seems to deteriorate faster than the Runners, which could explain their difference in ability. Shamblers are your classic, old school zombies. Decaying dead muscle doesn't move well after all. Runners on the other hand, are your third generation zombies, and don't seem to lose any of their muscle. In short, Shamblers shamble and Runners run. While this seems a simple difference, it is a very important one… it shows improvement. In either a natural case or in the case of a synthesized cause, this is a very scary prospect indeed.

The third variant, though it is really a sub category larger than the first, are the Mutant zombies. These monstrosities are the true beasts walking the streets, what should cause the real fear in the survivors. There doesn't seem to be any common change between the different mutants, and I personally have never seen a duplicate mutant far enough away from the first to be a separate mutation not caused by the first. To date I have cataloged five different Mutations. The first was simply an incredibly enlarged person, nearing ten feet tall with muscles grown so quickly they had ripped his skin in places. The second had seemed to begin growing bone tissue over any cuts or openings in its skin except for its mouth (Luckily it included it's eyes). The third was similar to the first, but only the right arm was enlarged. The fourth moved on all four with the agility of a natural born quadruped, and was either able to unhinge it's jaw or simply had a new sort of jaw altogether. The fifth had grown some kind of wings from it's ribcage, but was unable to take to the air. It seemed like it didn't know how, like a child attempting to skip the tricycle and go straight to a mountain bike. (Mutants will be referred to by this order as M1 through M5)

These Mutants are all far more resilient to attacks than the average zombies. When I encountered M1, he was attacking a group of three survivors using hunting rifles (a 30.30, and two 30 ot sixes) scoring consistent headshots which seemed to hardly even phase the beast before it ripped them apart. I personally shot M2 twice in the back of the head in un-ostized tissue after bashing it with a metal baseball bat and it showed no signs of slowing down. I only escaped because of it's blindness. Whatever is causing this different transformation is also increasing their ability to survive.

Tonight I discover a sixth Mutant. One of the teenager's I've been traveling with for the past few days was infected by a Mutant with large claws that had replaced its fingers (or so he said). The only visible wound on his body were claw marks on his hands and wrists, which means that it was these scratches that caused the infection. I have seen many people's skin opened by Runners and a few of the stupider ones by Shamblers, but it had never resulted in becoming a zombie, even if the wounds were fatal, without some sort of fluid exchange.

So far the normal changes are occurring, paled skin indicating a slowing of the circulatory system, a consistent, hacking cough due to phlegm buildup, and excessive prolonged vomiting caused by the beginning of necrosis in the stomach. This is what we've all seen people go through time and again, the basic progression of any of the causes(the lack of variance is more evidence towards different strains of a single cause). Fred, that is the teenager's name, stopped resisting his restraints ten minutes after I tied him down, more a sign of weakness than of resignation. Attempts to communicate with me show cognitive ability is present for the moment. It has now been three hours, and the constant vomiting has taken it's toll. Fred rolled to his side and stopped moving, simply letting his mouth hang open and his internal muscles do the work. It pains me to sit and watch this, but it must be done.

Five hours since the first bout of vomit, and it appears Fred is now deceased. His breathing has stopped and he no longer has a pulse. The wounds on his hands have started bleeding again post mortem. His fingers have not yet changed, and the rapid necrosis of his flesh has also not yet begun. I do not know why this necrosis occurs, but it has occurred in some form or another in 100% of the specimens I have encountered, the notable exception being Runners for whom there is no muscle necrosis, only other tissue.

Five hours and twenty seven minutes since the beginning of the change, and Fred's right hand just cracked loudly. It sounded like bone. His eyes have just reopened, and the characteristic moan can be vaguely heard behind the gag. At 32 minutes, the bandages around his right hand rips, the first and second digit growing at an alarming rate. At 33 minutes the left hand fingers began to grow as well. At 35 minutes growth has stopped and Fred is attempting to break out of his restraints far more vigorously than before. The fingers are now made of what appears to be solid bone, covered in a thin layer of blood and gore from his hand, and retain approximately the same length ratio to each other as before, however the middle digit is now approximately four feet long with a point as sharp as an ice pick.

Six hours and thirty minutes after the beginning of the transformation, there is no further visible mutation is Mutant 6(M6). The claw like phalanges appear to be made of the same type of bone seen in M2. I terminated specimen M6 by beheading it with a fire ax found on the ground floor. Body stopped moving immediately after the spinal chord was severed, mouth continued to chew for nearly 40 minutes, approximately the same time as other beheaded zombies(see experiments under Shamblers).

Important findings: Confirmed infection via simple scratch, though possible blood from original M6 remained on the claws and was transferred into the wounds inflicted on Fred, passing infection via known method.

From first prolonged vomiting, transformation took approximately five hours and thirty five minutes in a living specimen. This is significantly faster than the cause of a Shambler or Runner, which can take anywhere from a day to weeks for death and transformation.

Proliferation of Mutant strain continues to be 100% of observed cases, as opposed to approximately 92% of Shambler and Runner strains.


End file.
